CLIMATE CHANGE: HEARD IT ALL BEFORE?

EFL textbooks “do” climate change; I have to think of new ways in to prevent students rolling their eyes. I’ll always remember the girl who told me quite happily that it just didn’t interest her at all. And, OK, maybe it’s not immediately gripping when you're used to being entertained at speed, in colour and with a cast of celebs.

At the same time, it’s got to be more exciting than home make-over shows. Well, hasn’t it?

Number of victims in Twin Towers disaster: 2800
Number of victims in Madrid bombings: 200 +
Number of victims annually from consequences of climate change – malaria, dysentry and malnutrition: 160,000
(estimate by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which excludes deaths caused by tropical cyclones and typhoons)

Warming over the past century: 0.6C
Warming this century predicted by the inter-governmental panel on climate change (3000 scientists): 1.4C – 5.8C
Possible figure taking into account decline in (cooling) smoke pollution: 7C -10C
Other factors that may yet further increase the temperature rise are the release of carbon from “die-back” in drought-stricken Amazonian forests and the release of methane from the oceans, triggered by warming.

At the end of the Permian Era, 251 million years ago, 95% of life species on earth were killed by a global temperature rise of just 6C.

And what’s the best “joined-up thinking” the US (and UK) can come up with? A war for strategic control over the remaining fossil fuel reserves in the Middle East and the Caspian Sea!

facts & figures from High Tide: News From A Warming World by Mark Lynas, reviewed in The Observer, 24.04.04